Saturday, June 06, 2015

We've heard it before, but look at the figures

Years ago I posted about the very open Dutch sex education system, and it's no surprise to learn that Sweden's is very detailed as well. But look at the teenage pregnancy comparison:

Not all Swedish schools will spend quite as long on the subject as
they do in Gnesta – some get through it in four or five weeks – but the
course is a great deal more comprehensive than what is on offer in most English schools, where sex education still not a statutory requirement and is often delivered in a single “drop-down day” at the end of term.

The UK birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds is 19.7 births per 1,000 women, while in Sweden the figure is 5.2 per 1,000.

Seems to confirm the finding, repeated all over the place, I think, that open and frank sex education reduces teen pregnancy, and can even delay average age at which youngsters first try anything. (If only they could get that up to about 25, he muses.)

Oddly, even Japan manages a 5. (One suspects mostly from girls in school uniforms accidentally falling pregnant to creepy guys in their 40's. I don't know that young Japanese men are having sex at all.)

The lowest on the table: 1 each in North Korea (honestly, life must be too depressing there for a libido) but also Slovenia. (Well, that's in that East European region of the world that I have long written off as too complicated in history to ever bother understanding. I have no idea...)

And the highest regions: at the very top of the table - Niger at 205. In fact, I think every single country with a rate about 100 is African.